Regional experts from Eastern Africa are meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, to create a robust network to promote climate smart agriculture and highlight its importance in achieving increased agricultural yield and productivity within the region.

The three day dialogue, hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Eastern Africa, and supported by the EAC-COMESA-SADC Climate Change Programme, aims to form a sub-regional working group that will enable millions of farmers in the region to practice climate smart agriculture and thereby strengthen food security and improve farmers livelihoods.

The concept of Climate Smart Agriculture, initiated by FAO, addresses the  interlinked challenges of food security and climate change, with the objective to increase agricultural productivity, adapt and build resilience of agricultural and food security systems to climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Developing the resilience of agricultural systems to adverse weather events and climate change is fundamental to achieving food security in the region.

Regional efforts underway to support climate-smart agriculture include the Africa Climate-Smart Agriculture Alliance, which aims to help 25 million farming households across Africa practice climate smart agriculture by 2025 as agreed by the first Africa Congress on Conservation Agriculture in March 2014 in Lusaka, Zambia.

The three RECs of EAC, COMESA and SADC recognize that farming cannot remain business as usual: conventional farming of burning, cutting down trees and degrading landscapes will impact the environment adversely. Most Member States have already set their targets, for example, the government of Uganda, through the Ministry of Agriculture is implementing CSA in 11 districts and has a vision of covering 250,000 hectares and reaching one million farmers by 2025.

EAC together with COMESA and SADC are implementing a programme on climate change to bring significant livelihood and food security benefits to at least 1.2 million small-scale farmers through the application of well-tested, Climate Smart Agriculture that combines crop production with agro-forestry and livestock management. In 2010 these three Regional Economic Communities (RECs) agreed to jointly implement a Climate Change programme covering 26 African countries.

The experts meeting in Nairobi have agreed that there is sufficient evidence that Climate Smart Agriculture practices such as CA, agro-forestry, integrated pest management, crop rotation, mulching and residue management are promising options that, overtime can sustainably increase the productivity of smaller holder farmers to produce a surplus food.

Medium scale farmers can even do better with tractor rippers and seeders. Mr. Edward Gitta, who is implementing CSA project in 16 districts in Uganda and working with at least 25,000 farmers, with funding from COMESA through the program explains that climate smart agriculture is based on a few principles: minimal tillage, crop rotation and crop residue retention.

“Traditional ploughing is wasteful because continuous churning of soil leads to excessive soil erosion, nutrient depletion and water logging,” he said.

Climate Smart Agriculture involves making holes in the ground that are about 35cm apart, as opposed to churning the entire land. The holes, known as planting basins, are about 4 cm long and 15-20 cm deep. These increase water harvesting, filtration and stronger root growth. This technique is climate resilient and enables crops to better withstand excessive dry or rainy seasons, reduce soil erosion, and increase nutrient uptake.

Climate Smart Agriculture is a practice that the EAC wants to see up scaled in the region for productive and profitable agriculture that can feed the growing population without destroying the environment.

EAC, together with COMESA and SADC have facilitated the setting up of national task forces on CSA in Member States. The RECs are supporting the formation of regional platforms through which famers can access knowledge and information about CSA, and will work with Partner States to prioritise the scaling up of Climate Smart Technology and facilitate the public-private partnerships.

The experts in Nairobi are developing the terms of reference for the formation of a Climate Smart Agriculture Eastern Africa Regional Working Group to promote faster adoption of CSA in the region.